Posts Tagged ‘beginner gardening’

Longer days and the first brave flowers pushing through – spring is nearly here! This is the perfect time to plan for the coming growing season. If you’re new to gardening – welcome! This is for anyone looking to start a new vegetable garden. You’re about to embark on a journey that’s equal parts challenging and rewarding, mystifying but uplifting. Read on or watch the video for the top ten things I wish I’d known when I started out…

1. Let the Sunshine In

The first thing to consider when starting a vegetable garden is light. Most vegetables, fruits and herbs grow best in full sunshine – somewhere that receives at least 6 hours and preferably 8 hours of direct sunshine a day, though some shading is welcome in hotter climates.

Some cool-season crops – for example spinach, cabbage and radishes – can be grown in part shade, while there are plenty of flowers for both sunny and shady locations.

2. Convenience is Key

You’ll need to tend your garden regularly, so if possible position it close to the house where you will see it – that way you won’t forget about it and can see what needs doing as it needs doing. Try to site it near a source of water too, or install water barrels or other means of collecting rainwater close by to make watering quick and easy.

3. Love Your Soil

Lavish your soil with love! Nourish it with organic matter, including garden compost and manure. Manure must be rotted down for at least 6 months before applying it because fresh manure contains weed seeds, can harbour disease and may ‘burn’ plants due to its very high nitrogen content.

Add organic matter whenever you can, and at least once a year. This can be simply laid on the soil surface as what’s known as a ‘mulch’. Over time your soil structure will improve, becoming better draining and a healthier environment for roots. You can add organic fertilisers too of course, but think of these as a short-term boost rather than building up long-term soil health like organic matter can.

4. Don’t Be Too Hasty

As a new gardener it’s easy to get carried away, but a little restraint is essential. Plant too soon and tender plants are likely to be caught out by a sudden frost or will fail to thrive as they grow on. In most areas your last and first frost dates define your growing season.

Our Garden Planner can help. It automatically calculates your frost dates based on your location. As you add plants to your plan the accompanying Plant List grows too. Open it up and you’ll be able to see exactly when you should be sowing, planting and harvesting your chosen crops.

5. Give Plants the Best Start

Begin sowing outside only once your soil has warmed up and dried out enough to become workable. Seed beds – that’s the area you sow into – should have a fine, crumbly texture. Sowing under cover into plug trays and pots is a great way to get a head start while outside temperatures are still too low.

Transplants need planting holes that are bigger than the existing rootball. The soil then used to fill in the hole will be looser, which will make it easier for new roots to grow out into the surrounding soil and help plants to establish quicker in their new home.

6. Water Well

Most plants need an average of 1-2 inches (2-5cm) of water a week. You’ll probably need to water more as it gets warmer, but this does depend on rainfall. It’s better to water heavily once a week than a little every day. This forces roots to reach further down into the soil to seek moisture, improving self-reliance. Plants in containers can’t do this of course, so water them more often.

7. War of the Weeds

Remove weeds as soon as you see them so they don’t have a chance to produce seeds and spread. Hoeing is quick and easy, and severed weeds may be left where they fall to wither in the sun. Keep the blade edge sharp and close to the surface to prevent damaging crop roots. Hand-weed where the hoe can’t reach.

Mulching with organic matter is a great way stop new weeds popping up as well as improving your soil as it gradually rots down.

8. Keep Picking

Some vegetables must be picked regularly to keep the harvests coming. Beans, courgettes and tomatoes are just a few examples where picking will encourage even more pods and fruits to follow.

Similarly, removing old blooms from ornamental flowers – called ‘deadheading’ – encourages more to follow, extending the display a little longer.

9. End of the Season

An end-of-season tidy up is a great way to ensure a clean start the following year, but don’t get too carried away. Old seed heads of, for example, coneflowers and thistles will help feed birds over winter, while ornamental grasses can be left to add movement and structure to the garden – and overwintering sites for beneficial bugs such as butterflies.

Fallen leaves are a welcome resource. Add them to compost heaps, compost them alone to turn them into leafmould, or pile them thickly over tender perennials to protect them over winter.

10. Keep Records

Good gardeners make lots of mistakes, but they learn from them! By keeping track of when, where and what you grew and noting any pests, diseases or failures, you can build up a personal record of what works best for you and your garden.

Take advantage of our free online Garden Journal, which makes record keeping easy. Take photos outside on the go, then upload them with your written notes. Record when you planted, watered and tended your crops, get to the bottom of problems, and see how much you’ve harvested.

These tips are our recommendations, but of course everyone has a different opinion based on their own experiences. So if you’re not so new to gardening, what advice would you give to beginners? Let us know by commenting below, or head over to our Facebook and Twitter page.

When expanding a vegetable garden, or even building one entirely from scratch, it is vital to ensure that the location for your vegetable beds is chosen carefully. If you just build your beds without consideration to location, you may end up with a failed garden. So, here is a video guiding you through choosing a good location for vegetable beds in your garden.

Most vegetables need as much sun as possible, an open site with a south facing aspect with no overshadowing by walls, trees or hedges is perfect.

In contrast, there are many vegetables that may need to stay cool in hot climates such as spinach or lettuce that can bolt in hot sunshine. And so if you have shady areas, putting these sort of crops in the shade or under shade cloches will assist in keeping the plants cool.

Solid walls and fences can be used to good effect to shelter plants from any turbulent weather your garden may experience.

Soil must be moist to enable the plants to thrive… but soil must also be well drained so it doesn’t get water logged. So, for instance if you live in a new build the quality of the soil may be very poor near to the foundations of your house meaning choosing a location further away from the building will help.

Frost pockets are usually collected at the lowest part of the garden. Avoid planting in these areas as it can reduce the range of plants you can plant there which will remove whole areas of your garden from the crop rotation plan.

These are just a few tips that can assist with locating new vegetable beds, there are plenty of other aspects to consider and these can be found on the video below. Have you got any tips on choosing a good location for vegetable beds? Share them with us and help some new gardeners out!

Mr Fothergill’s GroBox has scooped first prize in the Plants Seeds and Bulbs category at a prestigious garden awards ceremony. Its Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) seed range was also a finalist in the category. The Garden Industry Manufacturers’ Association (GIMA) Awards 2015 were presented on 16 July 2015. Accepting the award on behalf of the Suffolk seedsman, Mr Fothergill’s joint-managing director David Carey said he was delighted the company had won.

“This prestigious award vindicates our decision to bring innovative new products to the seed market,” commented David. “We are continually looking for different ways to appeal to the different types of seed buyers, from beginners and novices to keen gardening enthusiasts.

“GroBox is one of a group of products we have launched under the ‘Garden Time’ banner aimed at new or inexperienced gardeners, including children, to encourage growing from seed. On the other hand, our RSPB seed range is aimed more at the established gardener, but focuses on gardening for the benefit of wildlife, particularly birds, bees, butterflies and other pollinators. It’s great to receive recognition for what we are doing”.